this channel the Monte
Videan Government has laboured to improve and keep open, as zealously
and as successfully as the Buenos Ayrean Government has laboured to
narrow and impede the old ones. The Buenos Ayrean Government has been
warned repeatedly by its warmest friends of the consequences which would
result from its illiberal commercial policy; but they might just as well
have reasoned with the winds; for, the only effect of the contrast
between the rapidly increasing prosperity of Monte Video and the
declining state of Buenos Ayres, has been to excite the most deadly
hatred and jealousy towards Monte Video on the part of the Buenos Ayrean
Government, and a settled determination to drag down that rapidly
improving city to its own level. The following sketch of the commercial
policy of the two countries will show what have been the principal
causes of the prosperity of Monte Video, and what of the decline of
Buenos Ayres; and also how strong a claim the policy of the former gives
it on the sympathy and support of this country.

A large portion of the revenue, both of Monte Video and of Province of
Buenos Ayres, is raised by taxes on the importation of foreign goods,
and the rate of duties is not excessive in either case. It is not on
this account that any one complains of the Buenos Ayrean Government, but
because it confines foreign commerce to the single port of Buenos Ayres,
and excludes both foreigners and foreign vessels from the other ports of
the Confederation, as strictly as the Chinese formerly excluded them
from every port except Canton. This it is able to effect by its command
over the entrance to the river Parana, the direct route to Entre Rios,
Corrientes, and the other provinces of the Confederation. Whilst the
provincial Government of Buenos Ayres thus excludes all foreign vessels
from the Parana, and as far as its control extends from the Uruguay, it
claims the right to expend the whole of the customs' revenue raised at
Buenos Ayres. The upper provinces very naturally consider this unjust,
and insist on having either a share of the revenue collected at Buenos
Ayres (somewhat on the principle adopted amongst the states of the
German Zollverein), or on having a general Congress of all the provinces
of the Confederation to decide how the money shall be distributed. This
General Rosas and his adherents refuse, and this refusal, coupled with
the equally positive refusal of the same parties to allow foreign
v